The Value of Worthless Lives

Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies

Ilaria Serra

A Fordham University Press Publication

In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy-the autobiographies written by immigrants. Moving between history and literature, Serra presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.

The Value of Worthless Lives

Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies

Ilaria Serra

A Fordham University Press Publication

Description

The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not words,making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold.In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. Ilaria Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy-the autobiographies written by immigrants.Here she looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration.Scouring archives, discovering diaries, and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, Serra recovers the voices of the first generation-bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, andseamstresses-compelled to tell their
stories. Mostly unpublished, often thickly accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities ofwork, survival, identity, and change.Moving between history and literature, Serra presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.

The Value of Worthless Lives

Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies

Ilaria Serra

Author Information

ILARIA SERRA teaches Italian at Florida Atlantic University and has published widely on Italian history and culture.

The Value of Worthless Lives

Writing Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies

Ilaria Serra

A Fordham University Press Publication

Reviews and Awards

Such a book is important to encourage representatives of the many newer immigrant groups to be stewards of their own group's autobiographical expressions.

Serra offers the first comprehensive study of the largely ignored legacy of immigrant autobiographies. . .

Analyzes 58 immigrant memoirs that date from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries and range in settings from city slums to frontier towns.

"The meticulous and moving accounts reported in this book provide us with a much needed insight into the desire and determination of ordinary men and women to inscribe themselves into history."-Italian American Review